Last weekend I had the opportunity to read my poem, “The Role of a Poet”1, at the SpringWrites Literary Festival hosted by the Community Arts Partnership of Tompkins County. It was the second time I read this poem for an audience. The first time I stood barefoot, surrounded by plant and people friends, in a free food and herbal medicine community garden. I stood with the bowing heads of Sunflowers laden with their children towering over me. Vibrant Calendula flowers tickled my shins and reflected the orange sun setting on my back. In the video I am a speaking shadow. The rays of the sun reach into the camera lens, obscuring the scene in hazy rainbow tendrils, leaving visible only the greenery of a content garden in the foreground. That first time I read mostly to the land; the poem was an offering dripping in their teachings. The humans who heard heard. This second time, I stood in heels (that although short, were not made for standing) in a room with white walls striking behind paintings, mixed media prints, tufted rugs. Behind me, one large store front window exposed strolling people, outside-dining people, on-a-jog people in a scene framed by grey cobblestone. Within the past two decades there once were enough trees and grass to create a sense of a natural nook amongst the business of modernity. One big monstera plant leaned down the stairs to my right that led to a loft. The sun was also setting to my right, but the window was not positioned to receive it. This time, I read the poem as a love letter to my friends, they are all poets (at least) since being birthed into this realm…the mostly black and brown faces who brought the land into the room. In the back rows, they sprouted behind the predominantly white audience…they trickled in on colored people time, but none of them missed the words that were an offering to them.
After my reading, an audience member came up to me and said, “I loved your poems! I know you only read one, but your introduction felt like a poem within itself.” They were right, I had thought the same thing when I was rereading the introductory blurb I wrote on two neon pink post-it notes. I wrote it in pen, in semi-bullet format. Both were nods to the laxed way I approached it. Relaxed because I trusted myself to fill in the blanks and find the suitable connecting places when I went up there. And with that trust, my “Element X”2 revealed itself:
Across mediums my work is centered in what it means to be bound. From my writing, to my painting, to dancing, I am always exploring this portal of “bound”. Bound to me is the birth canal where contraction and expansion meet. Bound both as 1) a state of contraction that is imposed on me, and more importantly, 2) a contract to an expansive destiny co-created between me and Olodumare [the truth which remains the same and is constantly moving, The Universe, God, The Most High, The Creator]. I think about what it means to be bound to this black body in a white supremacist world. But lately, more so than that, I’ve been thinking about what it means to be bound to the black body of the universe, to be the black body of the universe on earth.3
“What does it look like to make art from an indigenous center without translation? [To] practice holding the center?”- Akwaeke Emezi echoing Toni Morrison
Because bound is also about responsibility— what I feel is necessary for me to respond to. The how takes many forms. In a world dominated by white supremacism, a lot of responsibility is forced onto black people that is actually not ours, and equally there are a lot of responsibilities that we have shirked [to ourselves, our communities, our lineages, our Spirits, to the land] in the violent imposition of colonialism and assimilation. Thinking of blackness as the birth canal where expansion and contraction meet can help us reconcile.4
To be bound.
To be bound to.
To be bound to be free.
To be bound free.
What are you bound to? What stories, ideas? What people? What beings are you bound to?
“I will go where it serves me, serves me…
You will go where it serves you, serves you,
Serves you.
Forget enough to love what you remember.
Forget enough to love what you remember.
Forget enough to love what you remember.
Forget enough to love what you remember.
Forget enough to love what you remember.
Forget enough to love.”
-Autobahn by Vagabon5
I was familiarized with the idea of an “Element X” through Ayana Zaire Cotton’s course for worldbuilders, Seeda School. She adopts what N.K. Jemisin describes as “a creative device that powers speculative fiction. [The] premise that binds the narrative together, defining what is possible in a story and shaping what can (and does happen).” In Seeda School, Ayana frames this as “‘what if…?’ question that establishes clarity on your deep desires and powers the story of your creative ecosystem.” You can learn more about Ayana’s offerings at www.seedaschool.com
“I stood at the border, stood at the edge and claimed it as central. I claimed it as central and let the rest of the world move over to where I was.”- Toni Morrison
Check out @absintbooks on instagram for some insight to the three books that this piece is in conversation with.
Cye! it's so wonderful to read the story of how you finally found/(re)connected with your element x, it's been so inspiring to walk the seeda path with you, so much beauty and meaning in this transmission <3